“Yuck-o and the Fiery Serpent” sounds like a YA short story or moralistic tale. It is neither. Instead, it’s how anyone might react to reading about a particularly awful parasite called the guinea worm. Because it burns like hell on its way out, it shares description as a “fiery serpent” with strange biblical creatures. I’ll spare you the details of how drinking infected water gets the little buggers growing in one’s gut til they’re mature enough to burrow out of your skin. Slowly. Some relief may be had by soaking the site in water,… and so the cycle goes. The good news, I’ll tell you upfront, is that this particularly gruesome and painful parasite can be completely eradicated. Human beings are the worms’ sole host.
Some people associate the “fiery serpent” with snakes described in the book of Numbers (chap 21). According to the story, God sent biting snakes to afflict the Israelites whose complaining on their desert trek exasperated God. But I wonder if it isn’t rather the “fiery serpent” of Isaiah 14:29 that we should think of — predicted to plague Philistia, when they rejoiced over the death of Judah’s king. Whatever the case, the biblical (Hebrew) term is “seraph,” which certainly adds another dimension to our ideas about that order of angels.
